Thursday, 27 June 2013

Sir Oswald Hennessey chose a
cigar from the cedar box, snipped the end and held it under his nose for a few
seconds to enjoy its exotic fragrance. He lit it, took a series of quick puffs
to get it going, then strolled across the sitting room to his favourite
armchair. A few moments later the door opened and Hobson, Sir Oswald's butler,
showed Albert and Henrietta Parkin into the room. Henrietta rushed forward to
greet Sir Oswald.

'This is so
exciting,' she trilled. 'Thank you so much for inviting us.'

'You are most
welcome, Madam,' beamed Sir Oswald. 'I am humbled by such enthusiasm.
Henrietta
waited for Hobson to leave the room before removing her bonnet. She shook her
head to allow her loose golden curls to fall around her face. She looked at her
host from beneath extraordinarily long lashes. Albert Parkin sat in a chair and
picked up The Times newspaper.

'I see rubber's
down again,' he said sadly.

'You should
invest in my company,' laughed Sir Oswald. 'One of these days we're going to
hit the jackpot with our inventions.'

Henrietta
took a sip from her glass of port and pursed her lips. 'Do you think we could
borrow your engineer for a few hours? I fear our Bath O Matic machine needs a
little attention.'

'Of course,'
boomed Sir Oswald. 'I'll get Barrymore round there in the morning. I'm sorry
you're having trouble, they are normally a very reliable machine.'

'It's been
overused, that's the problem,' said Mr Parkin. 'Henrietta is never out of the
infernal contraption, I can't see what she gets out of it, personally.'

Henrietta
blushed and placed a soft gloved hand on Sir Oswald's arm. 'I do tend to use it
rather a lot,' she confided.

Mr Parkin put
down the newspaper and looked around curiously. 'What fabulous invention do you
have for us this evening, Old Man?'

Sir Oswald's
eyes lit up. 'Something very special,' he took a puff from his cigar and looked
around conspiratorially. 'I've developed a Time Machine.'

'A time
machine?' queried Albert. 'I already have a pocket watch and a grandfather
clock. What's so special about a timepiece?'

'This is not
a timepiece, my friend. This is a machine that will transport you through time
and space, to the past... or possibly, the future.'

'Good Lord,'
said Mr Parkin.

Henrietta's
eyes sparkled. 'Where is it? Can we see it? Have you used it?'

Sir Oswald
opened the door at the far end of the sitting room and led the couple into his
study. In the centre of the room stood a tall, black metal box, twelve feet
long by four feet wide. It was decorated with highly polished brass fittings. A
thick pipe marked, 'Inlet', protruded from the rear of the machine and
disappeared through a neatly cut hole in the wall. A second, smaller pipe
marked, 'Outlet', ran alongside. Each pipe was fitted with a brass fly wheel to
control the pressure.

'The Time
Machine is fed from a huge new boiler out in the yard,' explained Sir Oswald. 'We
had to build an especially large one to get enough power to run this particular
machine. It takes sixty-four pistons to generate enough power to get the sphere
spinning at the correct speed.'

Henrietta ran
her hand down the side of the highly polished machine and leaned back against
it. 'I can feel the power surging through me,' she said. 'It's quite
exhilarating.'

Sir Oswald
flicked ash from his cigar and grinned. He patted the machine lovingly. 'Isn't
she beautiful?'

'Very nice, I'm
sure,' said Mr Parkin. 'But does it actually work?'

Sir Oswald
looked hurt. 'Of course it works, my good man. Hobson has been back to 1756 and
Barrymore went back to 1588. I personally went back even further than that, so
I can assure you that it works, Sir.'

'Well, if you're
so determined, I don't see how I can say no,' said Mr Parkin. 'I wonder if our
new life insurance policy covers time travel.'

Sir Oswald
led Henrietta around to the front of the machine and opened a half glass door.
Inside sat a highly polished steel ball. Sir Oswald turned a knob and the
sphere opened up to reveal a small cushioned seat in front of a set of dials
and gauges. Henrietta sat down and Sir Oswald turned a dial, then set three
stops on the panel. He checked the pressure gauge carefully to ensure the
machine was fully up to steam.

'Right,' he
said brightly. 'We're ready to go. We just have to choose a time and place.
What do you think, Old Girl, where would you like to go?'

'Do you know,
I rather think I'd like to see what London will look like in the future.'

'That's a
grand idea,' said Sir Oswald. 'You're a game bird, I do have to say.' He
checked the pressure again and placed his hand on the date dial. 'Any
particular time? How about a hundred years on.'

'Let's split
the difference and call it a hundred and fifty,' said Sir Oswald. 'The machine
hasn't been sent forwards in time before. We probably shouldn't push it too far
the first time.'

Under Sir
Oswald's direction, Henrietta pushed two more stops and pulled a small lever on
her right. The date and time dials were set to January1st 2011.

Sir Oswald
produced a leather helmet and a pair of rubber goggles with thick glass lenses.
'Just a safety measure,' he assured. He reached into the sphere, pulled a
leather strap and fastened Henrietta securely to the seat.

'When you
arrive at your designated time, the sphere will automatically stop spinning. A
few seconds later it will open. You will be able to see your surroundings on
the glass screen in front of you while you are inside the machine. Mr Parkin
and I will be able to see what you are seeing on the screen in my study. We won't
receive any kind of sound though. Once you are out of the device we lose
contact and you're on your own. To return, just set the stops and turn the dial
to today's date and time.'

Henrietta
patted Sir Oswald's hand. 'This is so exciting. How long will I be able to
stay?'

Sir Oswald
stood back from the sphere and tapped a fogged up dial. 'You can stay as long
as you please, it really doesn't matter. Even if you were to stay for six
months, back here, only five minutes will have passed.'

'How very
convenient,' said Henrietta.

Sir Oswald
gave a final word of warning. 'If you go wandering, don't forget where the
sphere is. It has been set to land behind the stable block at the back of the
house, it should be safe enough there. Make sure you close the sphere before
you leave it though. We don't want to inadvertently bring someone back from the
future, not yet at least.'

Henrietta
checked the straps and adjusted her goggles and headgear. Mr Parkin waved to
her from the doorway of the machine. 'Bon Voyage, Old Thing. Say hello to the
future.'

Sir Oswald
closed the sphere and checked the pressure dials again. Satisfied, he pulled a
lever and stood back. The sphere began to revolve. As he watched through the
window, the orb increased speed until it became a blur. A few seconds later, it
disappeared.

Back in the
study, Sir Oswald poured a large brandy and handed it to his friend. Albert
Parkin took a sip and stared up at the foggy glass screen.

'Hope she's
all right,' he said quietly. 'She gets a little travel sick over distance.'

Sir Oswald
placed a hand on his shoulder. 'She'll be fine, Old Chap.' He nodded to the
screen. 'Look, the mist is clearing.'

Parkin's jaw
dropped as he saw the ghostly images of future London appear on the screen.
Small self-propelled, metal boxes filled the narrow streets. The pavements
groaned under the weight of the city's population.

'Where are
the horses?' gasped Parkin

Sir Oswald
moved closer to the screen. 'These little horseless boxes seem to be
everywhere. Their engineers must have found a way to make a steam engine small
enough to fit inside them. I wonder how they feed the coal to the boiler? I
imagine each box has a driver and a stoker sat up front.'

The image on
the screen faded and the fog returned.

'She's out of
the sphere,' said Sir Oswald. 'Henrietta's in the future.'

Five minutes
later they heard the sound of hissing steam and the whir of the sphere as it
slowed. Sir Oswald stepped forward eagerly and opened the sphere. Henrietta
climbed out and stepped into the study. Parkin gawped at her.

She was
dressed in bright pink shoes with seven-inch stiletto heels. Black stockings
stopped at her exposed thighs. She wore a tiny skirt which barely covered her
backside and her almost transparent blouse did little to conceal the flimsy,
red corset that fought a losing battle to hold in her breasts. Henrietta's
eyelids were painted pink to match her shoes; her lashes were three times their
normal length. There was a gold stud in her nostril. She stared at them
angrily.

'Wot iz yous
starin at?' she spat.

Albert Parkin
tried to soothe her. ‘You’re safely home now old girl, what on earth happened
to you?'

Sir Oswald
led Henrietta to the sofa and sat her down. 'She'll be fine in a few minutes,
Old Man. I was speaking in Latin for a while after I returned from Rome.'

Albert
nodded. 'Thank goodness for that. But what the hell is she wearing. And what
sort of language was she speaking? It's foreign, that's for certain. I thought
you sent her to London.'

'I did,' said
Sir Oswald. He took a cigar from the cedar box and snipped the end. 'She must
have stayed there for quite a time to involve herself in their culture to that
degree. What we have just seen and heard is the London of the future.' He
paused while he lit his cigar. 'I think I'm going to dismantle the time
machine, Old Man. If what we have just witnessed is anything to go by, then I
think it's fair to say that sometimes you are better off not knowing what lies
ahead. The reality can be far too upsetting.'

Thursday, 20 June 2013

The
skies opened and I ran into the museum for shelter from the sudden downpour.

I glanced around furtively as I
hunted through my pockets with wet hands in search of a tissue. I hoped that
anyone watching me would not think it was anything more than just the rain that
ran the length of my nose, gathered into a huge diamond droplet on the tip and
dripped down the front of my jacket.

The familiar wax polish smell in
the musty warmth of the entrance hall welcomed me. As a child, I’d spent many
an hour exploring here during the long school holidays, a good few years ago
now. My best friend and I had laughed as we flirted with the boys from the
grammar school, hiding in corners and stifling giggles behind our hands; made
up stories about the crowns, gowns and robes that how hung lifeless in dusty
corners. We’d held hands and cried over broken relationships in the darkened
quiet seats as teenagers and spent hours at the study tables trying to put
together essays that were different enough to look as though we hadn’t worked
together while at college. Just before Anna had moved abroad with her family we’d
both bought the same necklace from the souvenir shop and sworn never to take
them off as a token of our friendship. Then, in spite of the promise to keep in
touch no matter what,

we’d
lost contact with each other as the years passed. Ah, the memories that clung
tightly to that smell.

It
looked like the rain wasn’t going to ease off for I while and I decided to walk
round before going upstairs for a coffee in the café. Although the smell hadn’t
changed, the exhibits had. A dinosaur exhibition that had housed rows of bones
and artefacts had grown and now also had screens that allowed me to see the
creatures they came from at the touch of a button. History documentaries played
on monitors close to each exhibit. I remembered the dinosaur story we had
written one afternoon for a project on evolution our first year in senior
school. The ammonite fossil caught my eye; captured in what looked like an old granite
kerbstone, the curled shell nestled tightly inside a quartz casing. More tiny
pieces of quartz were glistening between the folds and I smiled as I thought
how much like life was this ancient creature; how much like my life!

I
walked up to the café, bought myself a cream cake and a latte coffee and sat by
the window looking down onto the street below. Rivulets of water joined
together as they ran races to the frame at the bottom of the window. I
reflected on the ammonite. Such a beautiful shell incarcerated in a coffin of
grey stone, taunted by the sparkling of reflected light on its prison walls. I
sighed and looked outside. Large droplets of rain clung to the window, little
images of people in the street below drifted through each drop. The vibrant,
magnified colours of their clothing faded away to the grey of the pavement once
they had passed and left me with just my broken reflection. I wondered where
the years had gone, where Anna was now, if she still thought of me. I sipped my
coffee.

‘Lorna?’ A voice broke into my
daydreams. ‘Lorna, I don’t believe this, it

is
you.’

‘Anna?’ My heart leapt. It
couldn’t be, could it?

‘Lorna, have you any idea how I
have missed you?’

As I stood up her arms embraced
me and I held her tight.

‘Oh Anna!’

I was speechlessly gazing into
her eyes as she brushed my face with her

thumb.

‘You old silly, I knew we would
find each other again. I just moved back

and…’
She paused for a second. ‘It’s funny; I sort of knew I would find you here.’

She removed her coat, shook it
and hung it on the back of a chair. I watched her graceful movements; she
hadn't changed a bit.

‘I’ll get you a drink,’ I said, ‘hot
chocolate with cream and

marshmallows?’

‘You remembered!’

She smiled and pulled the damp,
silk scarf from around her neck. A tiny silver ammonite pendant nestled between
her breasts.

‘I think we both did, didn’t we?’

She laughed as she caught my arm
before I left the table and pulled me toward her. Slowly she undid the top
button of my blouse, ran her finger down the chain and touched my pendant. Our
eyes met.

‘Did you put it on especially?’

I kissed her hand. How could I
have known, how could she? I smiled at her and hugged her again.

‘No Anna, I never took it off.’

About the Author

Marie Fullerton is a
retired lecturer, she has eight grown up children and she has wanted to be a
writer forever. She also started
painting twenty-one years ago and is completely self-taught. At fifty she was
proud of her 2.1 BA degree for English language, literary history and creative
writing at UCC and has since had several poems published in anthologies and
short stories in E-zines. She is currently working on two novels. Although she
has sold many paintings she has only recently tried her hand at illustrating.
You can see her artwork on her Facebook page using the following link here: LINK

Thursday, 13 June 2013

I
have played things over and over in my head, trying to recall if there was
anything in our first meeting, anything to show that she was different. But
there wasn’t. Not that she was the same, not the same as any of the girls I had
dated before; but nothing in her then to say she was different in the way that
she was. Nothing in the first meeting or the second.

We met in a crowded bar and I think I was the
one who talked first and she was the one who wasn’t interested to start with. I
bought her a drink, but I don’t remember what she was drinking so I don’t think
there was anything so odd in that. Later it was bourbon, just the one kind, but
on that first night it might have been wine. She was there with friends; that’s
what she said, though looking back she never introduced me to anyone. She
seemed nice enough and pretty as fuck and I gave her my name and she gave me
hers and we got to talking.

I walked her home that first night, a smaller
and smaller distance between us as we walked.

She
said it was not far and that she lived with her folks and she was sorry but she
couldn’t invite me in. I said I understood. I wasn’t up for meeting her parents
anyway and it wasn’t even a first date. It was a bungalow up Barstow Way where
she lived, with flowers in all colours in the garden and a light on at the
front and a brass plate on the door to tell you it was number twenty-three. I
walked her to the gate and she kissed me and said I was sweet and we should
meet again. I had her phone number in my pocket when I walked away and I walked
away taller.

I saw her maybe six times after that and
sometimes she stayed over at mine and that was just fine. Her name was Talulah;
it was after a famous actress that her dad had liked. She’d never been able to
live it down, she said, so now she didn’t try.

I
didn’t know what that meant, and so I shrugged and said how I liked the name and
it was different.

If I’m being honest, it was sometimes a little
crazy with her. Mostly in a good way, I thought at the time. She’d bring stuff
to eat, stuff she’d cook in my kitchen and serve up to me like she was my mam,
chilli with chocolate and chicken cooked with bananas. And she always cleared
up afterwards and that was something good. One day she brought a small packet
of weed with her and lying in bed after, we smoked one joint and then another
blowing blue and imperfect smoke rings up to the ceiling. She rolled the joints
and seemed to know what she was doing. It was my first time, and I wasn’t sure
about it. I felt a little dizzy and light-headed which I thought maybe was the
point.

She drank bourbon straight from the
bottle. Knob Creek Small Batch bourbon and no other. She brought the bottle
with her. It tasted of maple syrup and a little burnt on the tongue and then,
as it slipped down, something with raisins and cinnamon and liquorice. I’d
never known a girl who drank bourbon from the bottle, but it didn’t worry me,
not then.

Talulah, when she stayed over, always
slept late. That was fine at the weekend, the two Saturdays in a row that she
was there. I slept late then, too, and we had coffee together at the kitchen
table and she said her ‘fucking head hurt like it’d been squeezed in a vice’.
We had our coffee with the kitchen curtains closed against the hurtful sun and
then we went back to bed and I had no complaints there.

But there was a Thursday and then a
Wednesday that she came over and I had work the next day and so I left her sleeping,
dead to the world, and I snuck out of the house like a thief and I closed the
door soft behind me. When I got back at the end of my shift, she was gone and
there was a note pinned to the bedroom door and she said how she’d helped
herself to breakfast and she’d put the sheets and the pillowcases into the
washing machine and she’d see me at the weekend. Then her name was drawn in
letters like a child’s and underneath it three outsize kisses and a heart.

Truth
is that I liked her. It was early of course, and I wasn’t looking much further
than the weekend, but I liked her and she seemed to be good for me, except for
the weed and the bourbon. I wasn’t thinking to take her to meet my mam, not
yet, but I wasn’t thinking not to either. Then things took a sudden turn and
she got a bit weird. There was a night where she turned up late and I think
she’d started the proceedings without me and I was drinking bourbon to catch up
with where she was. That was the night of our first fight, and I don’t really
remember what it was about. She swore a lot, and I remember I told her to keep
her voice down on account of the neighbours and she went to the door then, not
a stitch on her, and she shouted to the street that the neighbours could all go
take a flying fuck. We laughed about it afterwards.

Make-up sex is always the best and so when
I woke the next morning I woke up smiling, and she’d already gone, and I wasn’t
too fussed thinking it was good between us again. The smell of her was still on
me and I was in no hurry to climb into the day or to wash her from me. I called
in sick for work and just lay back thinking of her.

But it turns out we weren’t good and I
don’t understand why. She came round one last time and we went at it again and
all over nothing that I could figure. I got a bit fed up,

if I am being honest, and I swore some too
that day. Anyway, she said it was over and broke all my plates and she screamed
and said that she didn’t want to ever see me again, and I said fine. She
slammed the door behind her and that was that.

Except it wasn’t and it isn’t. She left her bag behind, see. Her
handbag. I thought she’d be back to get it and that maybe there’d be a chance
we could make up again and it’d be better than it was. I sat at the kitchen
table waiting for her knock at the door, her bag before me, and two shot
glasses full to the lip with her favourite amber bourbon. She didn’t show.

I
gave her a week and still she didn’t call. I even went back to the pub where
we’d met and I retraced that first night walk to her home and to the bungalow
up Barstow, number twenty-three. I walked past the house several times, hoping
I’d be seen and I wouldn’t have to knock. Then I pushed open the gate and
rapped on the door.

Turns
out that two men live there. Been there for almost twenty years and they never
heard of any Talulah, except wasn’t there an actress by that name and she was
sometimes on the tv in black and white films. I asked them if they were sure,
and I had Talulah’s bag, and I was just wanting to return it. They looked at me
funny and said they were sorry and they shut the door against me.

I took the bag home and I thought then
that it was okay for me to look inside, looking for some sort of address where
I might find her and give her back what was hers. There was other stuff besides
the bag, some clothes and a pair of high-heeled shoes and an ivory backed
hairbrush. I tipped the contents of the bag onto the kitchen table and got the
fright of my life. There, amongst the eye pencils and lipsticks and an open
pack of tampons and a heart-shaped bottle of perfume and seven old shop till
receipts and an open pack of Doina cigarettes and a matchbook for a club in the
town that had closed down and the clear plastic bag of weed and a blank notepad
and several pens that had been chewed at the end and paperclips and bus tickets
and a roll of Selotape and a rabbit-foot key ring with only one key and a purse
with no bank cards and nearly seven hundred dollars in cash, there amongst all
of that was a gun. It fell with a heavy clatter onto the table.

‘Shit,’ I said and I backed away from it
knocking a chair over and I didn’t dare touch it at first. Then when I did, I
did so wearing gloves. It was a glock pistol and it was loaded, ten .45 rounds
in the magazine. My hand was shaking just holding it.

I looked back over everything then, like
my life flashing before my eyes, only it was my six days with Talulah and
nothing else. Sure she’d been crazy at the end, what with the swearing at the
neighbours and breaking the plates, and there’d been the bourbon and the weed,
and Talulah kissing me at her front gate on that first night only it wasn’t her
gate at all; but a gun in her handbag was something else.

I didn’t know what to do, whether to go to
the police or not, or if she was in trouble, or someone to be afraid of and
she’d be back to do me harm. So I hid the bag under the loose floorboards in
the hall and I laid the carpet back so you wouldn’t’ know, and I changed the
lock on the front door, changed it for a double cylinder dead bolt, and I went
out less than before and kept looking over my shoulder when I did.

Still she hasn’t come back and it’s been
over a year now, and I check the gun every day and I check the ten rounds in
the magazine and I always wear the same gloves when I do. I smoked the weed one
night when I was bored and that was just stupid, and stoned I kept getting up
to look out of the window and I kept checking the bolt on the front door just
in case and checking the phone to see if anyone had called.

I look for her in the street all of the
time, look for her name in the phone book, the only name I have and that's
Talulah – and it turns out her name is not so unusual after all. She said her
name was Talulah, and she was named after an actress that her dad liked, and if
any of that is true then that’s what I know and nothing more than that, except
the bourbon and the weed and the gun.

About the Author

Lindsay Fisher leaks stories and the leaks grow bigger with each passing
week and more and more of them spill out into weird or wonderful places. There
ain't no rhyme or reason to what is written, at least none that Lindsay can
discern. They're just stories.

Wednesday, 12 June 2013

We
haven’t always been here but the white walls have, here for those who never
wanted to grow up, who weren’t ready to go just yet. Some stay here a long
time, some leave within a few days. It’s not really for us to say who stays and
who goes. That’s decided by someone else and someone else was still deciding
where to put me. We all had a life before this; some had a family, some none at
all, family is something we try to forget, I sometimes wonder if mine has
forgotten me. I don’t remember much of my life before I came here, I’d like to
think it was a happy one; happiness now hard to come by. Not found in a
birthday cake or the opening of a Christmas present, how could it be? When time
stands still and celebration is spent.

When I first got here I feared the change. Now it leaves me unfazed, it
is my home. If I could tell you how long I’d been here I would, but the clock’s
hands were ripped off long before my arrival and the year has seeped from my
mind. Perched on a bench I cock my head in the direction of a newbie, skin a
sickly yellow and hair tied poorly into bunches, I nod my head in her
direction, she welcomes my presence with a timid 'hello.' So young and afraid,
she hurriedly looks around for her parents, she won’t find them here.

'How are you today?' I politely
ask, in a feeble attempt to abate her trepidations.

'I’m feeling much better, thank you,' she
replies.

At
least her parents taught her manners before she wound up here. I nod my head
and walk away. I want to stay and show her the ropes but what good would it do?
She needs to find her own way, she could be here a while.

I
make my way to what would be the bedroom if it were to possess a bed, although
I’ve come to realise why bother to have a bed when no one ever sleeps. Elmer is
already there, playing with his wooden yo-yo, he doesn’t even look up. 'Elmer!'
No response, I hate when he ignores me. 'Elmer!' Focused on the toy as it
bounces up and down, up and down 'Hey Elmer, you should put on a coat, you’ll
catch your death.' He meets my gaze then storms out of the room, I laugh
heartily at his annoyance. Elmer doesn’t speak, I don’t know if he can’t or he
won’t but all I know is Elmer got such a shock when he ended up in this place
that a word hasn’t come out of his mouth since. At least that’s what the other
kids say, Elmer’s been here a lot longer than me, you see. A lot of the kids
are like that, shocked when they end up here. I guess it makes sense; one day
you’re sat at home with a loving family then next thing you know you’re here;
no parents, no relatives, no nothing, just a bunch of children waiting to be
put in a new home.

Rumours
go round every so often about where we might wind up, one place sounds nice,
one place sounds awful. One thing’s for sure, I ain’t going anywhere anytime
soon. At fifteen years old I was lucky to get in here, seems sixteen is the cut
off. I don’t know where you go if you’re any older than that, not sure I want
to know either. I say the less you know, the happier you are. I make my way to
the garden, nothing grows but it’s nice to feel the cold air. It gets awful hot
in the home, causing me to take my hat off, the other kids laugh ’cause there
isn’t any hair on my head, not that that bothers me anymore, I got used to that
a long time ago.

I
hear the chorus of three young girls singing yet another round of ring a ring
o’ roses. There used to be four of them singing but one left recently, it
always got me down when people left but I guess that was the nature of this
place, it wasn’t designed to be lived in forever, it’s just a stop along the
way.

I
saunter back into the home; full of so many other children. It makes me happy
to have so much company yet it makes me sad to think the same fate has befallen
so many others. I get my iPhone out of my pocket, not that it works here, more
an act of ritual from my previous life than anything else. In hindsight I wish
I’d brought something else with me, not that you get to choose, you just end up
with what was on your person when you were taken. The same goes for your
clothes, I hate being stuck in this gown, had I known I would have thought to
change. Not that there’s much point thinking about this now, nothing’s gonna be
any different just ’cause I wish it. If that were the case there’d be a whole
lot of wishing going on around this place.

If the truth be told I always
figured I’d end up here, well maybe not here exactly but I knew I wasn’t going
to be staying there for too much longer. It was my mother’s tears that had
given it away. She’d said I was going to be fine, that I was going to stay with
her but the tears told a different story to the one her mouth was telling. My
dad told me to stay strong but I could tell he was crumbling inside. And my
sister, well I don’t think she knew what was going on, it was for the best,
innocent minds shouldn’t have to know the evils of this world. The doctor’s
often ignored me, scared to give me answers to my questions. The nurses would
feed me drugs as my mother fed me lies. Telling me it’d all be OK, telling me
I’d get better any day now. Well at least I’m not sick anymore. None of us are,
that’s the one good thing about this place. We might still look it, with
balding heads and bust up bodies but we don’t feel it anymore, so I suppose I should
be thankful for that. I think I spend more time thinking about the past than I
do the future, there’s a certainty in the past that the future can never hold.
It was so long ago that I can hardly even remember it now but some memories
were built never to be forgotten. The time I walked through the meadow with my
mother, the day my parents brought home my new baby sister, eating too much ice
cream on my tenth birthday, the day I got told I was sick and lastly the day I
died. These were memories I would always keep, no matter where I went next.
This is the limbo of Infants and like I said this place isn’t for living. It’s
just a stop along the way.

About the Author

Olivia Smith is an
aspiring writer in her final year at Salford University, studying English and
creative writing. English has been a passion of hers since a very young age and
she has contributed to the Cafelit website on several occasions.